A Unicorn Dies: A Novel of Mystery and Ideas

By Paul S. Fiddes

Giles Questing, an undergraduate student at the University of Oxford, finds his life taking an unexpected turn after the suspicious death of a PhD student, a death the police believe to be suicide. He determines to solve the mystery by following a trail of artworks that depict a unicorn. Travelling to museums and galleries, he gradually discovers the truth about whether the student has taken his own life or been murdered, and who - if anyone - is guilty. His quest immerses him in the world of the unicorn in medieval and Renaissance art, and introduces him to the present-day obsession with the unicorn in the media, advertising, and social networks. All this enables him to crack the code of the unicorn that has been buried in the tradition of the Christian church for many years, and to answer the questions he has about a death that deeply affects him personally and that finally threatens his own life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Sep 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532693670

Paul S. Fiddes

Paul S. Fiddes is Professor of Systematic Theology in the University of Oxford, and Principal of Regent's Park College, Oxford. He is a minister ordained in the Baptist Union of Great Britain. Among his many previous books are The Creative Suffering of God (1988), Past Event and Present Salvation (1989), Freedom and Limit (1991), The Promised End (2000) and Participating in God (2000).

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A Unicorn Dies

A Novel of Mystery and Ideas

Paul S. Fiddes

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A UNICORN DIES

A Novel of Mystery and Ideas

Copyright ©

2019

Paul S. Fiddes. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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First published in

2018

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Kingston Road, Oxford OX

2

6

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Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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8

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www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-9365-6

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-9366-3

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-9367-0

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Names: Fiddes, Paul S., author.

Title: A unicorn dies : a novel of mystery and ideas / Paul S. Fiddes.

Description: Eugene, OR : Cascade Books,

2019

.

Identifiers: ISBN

978–1-5326–9365-6

(paperback) | ISBN

978-1-5326-9366-3

(hardcover) | ISBN

978-1-5326-9367-0

(ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Unicorns. | Mystery fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | Animals, Mythical. | Crime in literature. | Psychological fiction. | Theology in literature. | Christian fiction, English.

Classification: LCC

PS3570.A92727 F53 2019

(print) | LCC

PS3570.A92727

(ebook)

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

04/18/19

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgements & Permissions

Chapter 1: Hannah

Chapter 2: Tutorial

Chapter 3: Scapegoats

Chapter 4: About Benedict

Chapter 5: Death

Chapter 6: Postcards

Illustrations: the six postcards

Chapter 7: Memorial

Chapter 8: Suspended

Chapter 9: Horn of Ulf

Chapter 10: Montmartre

Chapter 11: The Lady

Chapter 12: Oxford

Chapter 13: Afternoon in Rome

Chapter 14: Maiden

Chapter 15: Alternative World

Chapter 16: In Class

Chapter 17: Alpha Mu Omega

Chapter 18: The Cloisters

Chapter 19: Another death

Chapter 20: Colmar

Chapter 21: Another Hospital

Chapter 22: Oxford Again

Chapter 23: Stirling Castle

Chapter 24: The Upper Path

Chapter 25: The river

"An extraordinary achievement . . . the author has invented a new genre, the subtitle A Novel of Mystery and Ideas catching what seems to me the originality of the book. He writes very beautifully—finely rhythmic sentences and great descriptive phrases, holding the tension until the end."

Micheal O’Siadhail Distinguished Poet in Residence, Union Theological Seminary, New York

This is such an intriguing and interesting novel. The plot is absolutely ingenious and both characterization and dialogue are wonderful.

John Barton Emeritus Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture, University of Oxford

A page turner in the best sense, especially because of all the mysteries hidden in the unicorn art. It manages to clearly integrate René Girard on violence and scapegoating into the early part of the story. This book is very visual – the tapestries, the Alternative World game, sights in Oxford, and the landscapes and Museumscapes through which Giles Questing travels. The book lends itself to filming for that reason, and also because it might bring to the screen religious and philosophical depth to those billions who enjoy a Dan Brown symbol-intrigue.

Larry Bouchard Professor of Theology, University of Virginia

"The author points to the importance of art and literature, as well as raw life, in nurturing an understanding of the deepest mysteries of life. The unicorn is brilliantly chosen to lead us through these woods. A Unicorn Dies is both gripping and complex."

Hugh Whittaker Professor in the Economy and Business of Japan, University of Oxford.

Medievalists, art historians, and travellers will find much to enjoy in this imaginative first novel by Paul Fiddes, with its strong Christian undertones, set in a thoroughly modern Oxford, city of cranes, not spires.

Church Times

Elegantly written and with real substance and complexity to its plot. This is a book about many things, including the relationship of myth and religion, of the unicorn and the gospel, and the links between symbol and allegory within the puzzling idea that something that never existed can have such a powerful effect on our lives. Yet it is not of the world of the theological monograph but rather is an accessible read that conveys complex ideas in a way that is sometimes even fun. If you like the imaginary Oxford world of J. R. R. Tolkien . . . you will enjoy this book.

Search: A Church of Ireland Journal

Acknowledgements & Permissions

I am grateful to a number of people who have allowed me to draw on their expertise in writing this novel. My wife Marion has given me a wealth of general details about the John Radcliffe Hospital, and Jenn Sula Minns has given me specialist information about the system of signs in use there. Alexander Vinter has put his vast experience of portering in the same hospital at my disposal. Fleur Talbot has helped with medical knowledge, and Kathryn White has checked and corrected my account of police procedure. Students from Georgetown College, Kentucky, have enlightened me about the customs of American college fraternities. The lecture on ‘The Unicorn and the Platypus’ described in chapter 22 is closely based on a lecture given by Professor Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art in the University of Oxford, entitled ‘Unicorns: Can We Believe Our Eyes?’, on May 5, 2015 at St Barnabas Church, Oxford; reference is made to the lecture with the kind permission of Professor Kemp. The manuscript has been read by my colleague Bethany Sollereder, and I am grateful for suggestions she has made. John May provided scrupulous proof-reading of an early published text. Richard and Rosemary Kidd accompanied Marion and myself on a unicorn hunt to Stirling Castle, and the account in chapters 23–24 has benefited from their interest and enthusiasm. Despite all this assistance, any errors remain my own.

I should make clear that all the characters, the plot, the colleges of the University of Oxford referred to, Horne Grant College, the house at 81 Observatory Street and the ‘Alternative World’ website are imaginary. Other places, all the works of art and the unicorn lore are real, or at least as real as I can make them.

The cover illustration: The Unicorn in Captivity. The Cloisters Museum, New York. © 2017. Photo Scala, Florence: courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum, New York; reproduced by kind permission.

Copyright for the illustrations included between chapters 6 and 7 is as follows:

‘Postcard 1’—The Horn of Ulf. Undercroft Museum, York Minster ©Chapter of York: Reproduced by kind permission.

‘Postcard 2’—The Lady and the Unicorn, Touch. Museé de Cluny, Paris ©Agence photographique de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux et du Grand Palais: reproduced by kind permission.

‘Postcard 3’—Raphael (1483–1520): Lady with Unicorn, 1505–1506. Rome, Galleria Borghese. © 2017 Photo Scala, Florence: courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali e del Turismo; reproduced by kind permission.

‘Postcard 4’—The Unicorn in Captivity. The Cloisters, New York © 2017 Photo Scala, Florence: courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum, New York; reproduced by kind permission.

‘Postcard 5’—Martin Schongauer, The Mystic Hunt. The Unterlinden Museum, Colmar ©Agence photographique de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux et du Grand Palais ; reproduced by kind permission.

‘Postcard 6’—The Unicorn at Bay. Stirling Castle, Scotland ©Historic Environment Scotland; reproduced by kind permission.

Copyright for the illustration between chapters 23 and 24:

‘The Seventh Tapestry’—The Mystic Hunt of the Unicorn. Stirling Castle, Scotland ©Historic Environment Scotland; reproduced by kind permission.

The song quoted in chapter 8 is recorded by vChenay, ‘I am the Unicorn’, lyrics ©2013 Gary David Bogosian, Mark I. Ciampittiello and Vanessa Vento, reproduced by kind permission of G + V Music.

Facebook, Google, Starbucks and Lego are registered trademarks, with all rights reserved.

1

Hannah

On a May morning Giles Questing was walking through the University Parks in Oxford, thinking about the approved method for catching a unicorn. He had no expectations of finding any examples of the beast in the immediate vicinity, but the means to entrap it was—he presumed—somewhere on view around him, and he had an active imagination. He also had the advantage of having just read John of Trevisa on the subject in the English Faculty Library, and so he knew that the essential point was this: first find a virgin. The next step was to sit her under a tree.

He sat down on the bench dedicated to the memory of J. R. R. Tolkien, stared at the pleasing mixture of grass, birches, willows and water, and gave himself up to dreaming. Which of the many girls in his field of sight would be the most suitable to use for luring a unicorn to its fate? And which tree should he select for her? He could feel the gnarled wood pressing into her back and hear the swish of hooves through the grass as the creature approached, dipping its head in acknowledgement of her beauty, shyly laying its single horn in her lap, and glancing up at her with its milky-blue eyes. It could then be relied upon to go to sleep and give the hunters their chance, hidden so unsportingly in the bushes.

Her lap, he thought. Yes, her lap. If this were a medieval scene then the lap would be mysterious in its many folds of silk, an open apron, spreading wide and covering the ground. The heavy head would sink into the space so generously provided, between limbs delicately outlined in the cloth. If the unicorn were to appear here and now in the haze of the afternoon, then there would no doubt be other kinds of lap offered. Giles thought of the wonderful triangle made by a short dress and two long legs. The head would be held more tautly on such material, and the smooth white jaws of the animal would brush against bare skin.

Two girls padded by, on their jogger’s circuit through the Parks, lycra-clad. Glancing at them covertly, Giles found neither mystery nor wonder there. Though there was flesh to be seen it was exposed in too practical a way, as well as covered in a light film of sweat. A whiff of something rancid in the air as they passed made him recall that, according to ancient authorities, the unicorn was remarkably sensitive to odour, and could sniff out a suitable maiden at a distance. How, after all, could a virgin be identified on such brief inspection? Giles had done a little reading around his subject in the library, and some medieval writers had been both enthusiastic and respectful about what they called ‘the odour of chastity’, which the unicorn would detect as he stepped along the forest path. Other writers depended on the holding power of the eye for recognition; there was something in the look, as they gazed at each other, beast and maiden, that gave the clue. The indomitable Abbess Hildegard of Bingen was particularly emphatic about this, and had even suggested that increasing the number of maidens would intensify the charge of the eyes. In defiance of the male point of view, she had advocated replacing the lone virgin under the tree with a bevy of girls wandering round the woods collecting wild flowers. Giles had a definite preference, however, for the more established version.

Giles, it must be said, was a dreamer. Oxford conspired to keep him in a state of perpetual somnambulism. It was not the dreaming spires of the advertising copy for Oxford that had this effect on him; indeed, looking around him now, he could see fewer spires than cranes, building one more addition to the science blocks on the southern side of the Parks. He was permanently sleepy during the hectic eight weeks of each term for a combination of reasons. The Oxford tutorial system encouraged him to spend long hours in the libraries which were heavy with the book-dust of the ages, inducing the resting of head on hands for a snatched sleep; knocking off at lunchtime for a pint in one of Oxford’s pubs hardly helped attention during the afternoon. Then essays were invariably written during the night before the tutorial; keeping vigilant in the tutorial itself, sufficiently to engage in a cut and thrust of argument with the tutor, was certainly possible, but it exacted a heavy toll in the following two days. At least once a week he spent until the early hours of the morning in one of the night-clubs where the young of Oxford danced, and began the next day with a deficit of alertness.

He shook himself awake, continued down Oak Walk alongside the river, past the duck pond where children were torturing young frogs with sticks as they tried to clamber out of their birthing pool, and paused by the bench simply marked ‘Cholmondeley’. He was still a little early for his appointment at Observatory Street, and so he sat down again. He knew, as he would not have known a year ago, how to pronounce the name carved into this seat as a dignified, yet supremely self-confident, memorial. No more than the single word was needed to evoke generations who had been Lord Great Chamberlains of England. According to the special spelling rules of the upper classes, the name was to be spoken as ‘Chum-ley’, and uttering it as written when greeting someone bearing it would evoke the same kind of sideways smile as referring to Magdalen College as anything other than ‘Maudlin’. To meet a Cholmondeley at Magdalen and get both wrong at once would be a social nightmare.

Giles was sensitive about names, as he had suffered a great deal from his own at the West London Comprehensive school where he had completed his earlier education, and where his mother had worked as the school secretary. When younger he had not greatly minded being dubbed ‘Giles Questioning’ by teachers who made this response to his constant curiosity, and who without fail thought they were the first to make the joke. His fellow-students in adolescent years were less gentle, and came up with such variations as ‘Giles Queering’ and ‘Girls Chesting’. He had vowed to get even with them all by escaping from the featureless suburbs of London to Oxford, though he had suffered something of a setback at his interview when, on offering the name of the London Borough of Ealing where his school was situated, he had been greeted by the response, ‘Isn’t that where the train stops on the way to Paddington?’ Recently, having found the genre of medieval romances, he had become reconciled to the name ‘Questing’, and liked to think that it expressed some special sense of searching or yearning that he felt within him, and which he did not yet realize was common to most young people of his age.

He looked in a sleepy way at the scene in front of him. The grass of Picked Mead was strewn with clumps of trees, and some were gathered together into a small-scale grove, yew, cypress, ash and hawthorn giving it a mysterious and sacral air. A little distance away a girl was sitting under one of the trees, with the remains of a picnic spread out around her. She was wearing a summer dress and had a lap, certainly. He could also just discern a mass of long curls surrounding her face. The term ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ crossed his mind, but was quickly identified and dismissed as a cliché. She seemed, one might say, a suitable candidate for catching unicorns. He was just imagining the fabulous animal moving gently towards her from among the trees when a young child, five or six years old, suddenly shot out from behind a bush and advanced upon him, waving a stick in a menacing manner. Giles had learned from any number of tabloid newspaper stories that he should not attempt bodily contact in any circumstances, and so he made haste to get himself out of harm’s way. He stood behind the bench, out of range, and smiled what he hoped was a friendly and placating smile. The boy at once flung down his stick, burst into tears and ran towards the girl, shouting for help. As he buried his head in her lap she comforted him, and looked suspiciously at Giles. He thought the best thing was to make his way out of the Parks, hoping that she would not pick up a mobile phone and contact the police.

As he walked briskly away, despite his anxiety he could not help reflecting that the girl was probably not the best candidate after all, as she was most likely the boy’s mother and so evidently not a virgin. Passing the cricket pitches, where a player was brandishing his bat in a threatening way, he recalled that some medieval authors reported that a unicorn, having divined that the maiden set before him was not virginal, would grow angry and run her through with his horn. Reaching the gate opposite the multi-coloured brickwork of Keble College, thrown up by the High Church movement of the nineteenth century, he added a mental qualification. He had read that some texts of the Syriac Church were less concerned about the strict virginity of the woman set to trap the unicorn, and portrayed her as positively seductive. Experienced, at any rate.

By now Giles had reached the road, and looked about nervously for signs of a police car. None appeared, and Giles made his way from the park gates to Observatory Street, free from pursuit from the police cars, but not from harassment by cyclists who clearly believed that they were exempt, by some law made for the benefit of users of two wheels alone, from the restrictions of traffic lights. He turned in from the main road to the quiet side street, looking for number 81, which turned out to be near the end. He knew that, like much else in Oxford, the appearance of things belied their reality. He saw a road flanked by a row of small, narrow houses, few more than one window and one door in width. They had been made for the labouring classes a century before, in the expansion of the city northwards when dons had finally been loosed from the confines of the colleges, permitted to marry, have families and commute into their colleges to teach and enjoy the cordon bleu cookery of the high table. By night they returned to their villas of sandstone in the new wide streets and were served by those who crouched, in their humility, in the cramped dwellings of such roads as Observatory Street.

But now the face of things was deceptive. Just as the blank walls of the colleges in the centre of the city concealed roomy quadrangles and expansive gardens, glimpses of which could be caught through the small wooden doors that guarded the entrances; just as the ragged and dirty student uniform of jeans and sweatshirts concealed bodies nourished in the best private schools; so the façade of Observatory Street hid architectural extravaganzas which burst out into the gardens beyond the rear walls. Behind the mean frontage were extensions which stretched like the interiors in Dutch paintings, or like a tunnel of images made by facing mirrors, providing their academic and professional inhabitants with music rooms, farmhouse-style kitchens, sun-lounges and exercise areas. Giles was not surprised that the apparently limited area of number 81 was able to accommodate not only the owner of the house but also three lodgers.

He was surprised, however, by his potential landlady. The door was opened by a girl whom he at first presumed was one of the students living in the house. On asking for Ms Hannah Grace, and giving his name, she disconcerted him by exclaiming, ‘Oh dear! I am so sorry. But it’s the bathroom, of course.’ Hastily he disclaimed any pretence to being a plumber, and explained that he had come about the room that he hoped was still spare for next year.

‘I know’, she said with an unsettling calm. ‘Your friend Emily telephoned me and apologized for not taking the room after all. It seems she’s got an offer to live with a group of friends. She said she was sending a friend who was interested in renting, but she didn’t say what sex. I assumed she meant a girl.’

She had coloured at the word ‘sex’, flushing just noticeably beneath a slightly dark skin. Giles took in an appearance which was a little Persian, an oval face with high cheek bones and wide-set dark brown eyes, framed by a neat curtain of dark hair falling to the bottom of her neck. Her mouth was fairly wide for her narrow face, and throughout their conversation was mostly set in a serious line, but at the moments when she smiled her whole face opened up in welcome. Her eyes regarded him solemnly, though something humorous flickered there. He felt both attracted and uncomfortable.

‘What I mean’, she continued, ‘is that I’ve let rooms in the past to male students and I’d rather hoped to keep to women from now onwards. It’s a question of the bathroom, you know. I’ve had too much experience of the women having to clean and clear up after the men have used it. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can help.’

Over her shoulder he could see the ground floor of the house, with the garden beyond, and could see that it was only slightly extended—probably to provide the bathroom mentioned, and making a larger kitchen underneath. It looked welcoming, plain but bright, with white walls and sunlight coming in from the garden.

‘I suppose it wouldn’t make any difference if I said that I was quite good at clearing up, and that I dislike dirty bathrooms extremely?’ he queried. She looked at him quite directly, and again he felt disturbed, but not unpleasantly. She laughed and hesitated, before shaking her head regretfully again.

Giles was disappointed, and realized that he was probably facing a long search, having left things far too late in the year for much of a choice of lodgings. As he said goodbye and turned away from the door he found himself remarking, ‘Well, I must get back to my essay on unicorns.’ Thinking about it later, he was at a loss to account for why he had blurted this out. Perhaps it was just for something to say to cover an awkward moment, or perhaps he sensed that she was someone it was easy to go on talking to. Whatever the reason, her reaction was unexpected.

‘Wait a moment, then’, she said, and he turned back to face her. She was looking at him carefully once more, although he felt that he had already had her full attention from the beginning of the conversation. He was surprised to see that she was apparently reconsidering her decision. ‘Perhaps we can work out the room situation, and you must have a talk with Benedict.’

Later she telephoned to offer him the room, and when he returned to look at it she told him that she had been half-inclined to agree anyway, and his mention of unicorns just tipped the balance. But at the time it seemed to him as if he had uttered a secret password which had given him entrance to a desired but forbidden realm. The apparently magical effect of the mention of unicorns may well have contributed to his obsession with the subject and led to all the consequences that were to follow. The promised conversation with Benedict, Hannah’s fiancé and a theological research student at Helwys College, had to wait until after the summer vacation.

2

Tutorial

Giles settled back, rather uncomfortably, into an armchair that was showing more evidence of springs than horsehair, and began to read his essay.

‘The medieval Bestiary’, he began, ‘is a rag-bag of information and misinformation about animals. It has no single author, but grew through additions made by many hands over the years. It began from a Greek book called the Physiologus, written in fourth-century Christian Alexandria, which collected animal lore and drew morals from it, in the manner of Aesop’s fables. As it was translated into many languages, more animals were added, from first-hand observation and from the authority of ancient literature. In the virtual zoo it presents us with, the most interesting animal is the unicorn.’

He paused, suddenly aware that his tutorial partner, Emily, was shifting in her seat and leaning forward about to interrupt. He deduced that it was his essay and not the chair that was causing her discomfort, and was immediately proved right.

‘Wait a moment’, she protested, ‘I’ve read the only medieval English version of the Bestiary there is, in the Exeter Book, and there’s no unicorn in it. I even went to the trouble of reading the whole bloody thing, not just the selections in the reader we were given. I found it in the notes at the back and looked it up in the library—it’s a manuscript in the British Museum and there’s absolutely no unicorn in it. No way. There’s . . .’, she consulted her own essay, ‘a lion, an eagle, a serpent, an ant, a hart, a fox, a spider, a whale, an elephant, two kinds of doves, a panther and a seductive-looking mermaid, but that’s all. I was rather fond of the elephant, myself.’

She leaned back, and looked for approval at the tutor, but he said nothing, beyond murmuring ‘That’s traditional for mermaids, but one has to beware of drowning, of course.’

Giles found to his surprise that Emily was more interesting than he had thought, and he tried not to look at her plunging neckline, barely covering an expanse of rounded, freckled skin, which was rising and falling more quickly with the effort she was making to get her point across. Her head with its reddish hair was tilted up aggressively as if welcoming a fight. She had, he observed, some kind of top tucked into a denim skirt reduced in length for summer and getting shorter still with every agitated move. She wasn’t wearing tights and a sandal dangled precariously from her foot as she hitched one leg over the other. But he checked himself and returned to the argument.

‘The English Bestiary’s only a selection from a Latin version’, he pointed out. ‘There are about one hundred and fifty animals in the twelfth century Latin text, and the unicorn’s definitely there.’

‘I thought that we were reading English’, she retorted. ‘It’s a bit unfair, bringing in the Latin. This is a Medieval English tutorial, you know.’

‘John of Trevisa, 1397’, he murmured.

‘What did you say?’ she said, startled.

‘In 1397 Trevisa translated a Latin commentary on the Bestiary written by someone called Bartholomew Glanville in the thirteenth century, who himself was following an older writer called Isidore. It’s not got the whole works in it, but it’s got much more than the English poem we were talking about. It’s a kind of second-hand bestiary. Trevisa wrote in English, and the unicorn’s there, really there. I read the notes at the back of the reader as well, and found the Oxford edition of Trevisa on the shelves in the college library. I was just skimming through it to see what animals it had, and I found a unicorn, though he starts off by calling it a rhinoceros.’

And, he thought, I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind since then.

The tutor agreed that Trevisa could indeed be counted as medieval English prose. He indicated, delicately, that Giles had shown promising initiative in the matter of footnotes and that this augured well for the future. Emily was silenced for the moment, yet not unwillingly as she was becoming intrigued by what looked like the most passionate engagement with literature that she had yet seen from Giles.

‘So what did you learn from John of Trevisa about unicorns?’ enquired the tutor, scanning his bookshelves intently as if he expected to see the ancient author emerging from their dark recesses.

Giles continued to read his essay. ‘Trevisa reports that the Unicorn is an extremely strong beast, with one horn in the middle of his forehead which is very sharp and at least four feet long. No hunter can catch him, but he can be caught by a stratagem. A virgin girl is led to where he lurks around, and there she sits down. She opens her lap, and the unicorn comes and lays his head in it, losing all his fierceness. Drawings in various manuscripts show her sitting under a tree and holding him affectionately by the horn. The hunters, hiding near by, can easily catch him or spear him to death. The image which Trevisa offers us is a symbol of love that has endured through the ages. In the thirteenth century, the Bestiary of Love by Richard de Fournival portrays love as the skilful huntsman, and the lover as dying the death to which he was doomed as he sleeps in a maiden’s lap. The story has gone on inspiring poets and painters such the Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti, presenting us as it does with a lover who is willing even to die for the sake of the one he loves.’

‘Hold on there’, interrupted Emily tersely. ‘Hold on. Don’t you see that it’s the old story, all over again? It’s the woman’s fault. She’s the deceiver, the betrayer. She not only deceived Adam but now this darling little unicorn as well. And it’s all to do with sex, in fact her sexuality. He lays the horn in her lap—there’s a phallic symbol for you—she even holds his horn in her hand, good God, I shouldn’t wonder if she doesn’t lick it with her tongue, and then he gets himself killed. He suffers death because of the sin of the woman and the sin of her fascinating lap.’

Giles sat, appalled. He saw the picture he had been carrying in his head for a week get blurred around the edges and then slowly dissolve into a dirty smear. This was a perspective on the myth that he hadn’t seen before. He’d realized about the horn—you could hardly miss it—but betrayal? Sin? He fought back.

‘This is typical feminist revision of literature’ he said. Women critics are always wanting to find their own meaning in literature, spoiling it for others’. He was quite upset.

‘Not really fair’, said the tutor quietly. ‘The more vivid details of Emily’s imagination are not in the sources, either in the text or . . .’, he paused, ‘the pictures, but the theme of deception is quite strong, and it’s a bit puzzling that the woman is both the lover and the betrayer, life and death to the unicorn. Scholars of the myth find all kinds of